


sand through the hourglass

by martial-quill (martial_quill)



Series: young, scrappy, and hungry [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Jessica Jones (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Gen, No Spoilers I Promise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-12 20:42:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13555206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/martial_quill/pseuds/martial-quill
Summary: Expanding drabble-fic, compliant withP.S. 35, Hell's Kitchen.





	1. early days

**Author's Note:**

> I thought you guys deserved something that would make you less likely to cry.

**1\. Blue**

 When Maggie walks out of the Doctor’s room and tells him it’s a boy, Jack thinks his heart will burst from mingled joy and terror.

  1. **Talent**



He doesn’t know what happened, he really doesn’t. He teaches Matty the letters in one afternoon, and then two days later catches him under the cover of the bed reading the dictionary.

 

  1. **Focus**



By the time Jessica is eight, she’s learned to do her (very little) homework first, and then start playing, if only because Uncle Jack will be grumpy otherwise. Alyssa buys Jack a bottle of Glenlivet as thanks.

 

  1. **Rocket**



Jack almost usurps Brian’s position as ‘coolest Dad’ -- it’s hard to beat boxing as a ‘cool job’ apparently -- until Brian explains that a car is technically powered by an explosion.

 

  1. **Surprise**



The first time he wakes up, he forgets that he can’t see and that that’s normal.

It takes him six months to remember.

 

  1. **Lights Out**



They’re five when they have their first sleepover, lying back to back on Jess’ mattress, whispering and giggling.

When Alyssa asks them what’s so funny, and why they aren’t asleep, Matt says, “Swordfish”, while Jessica says, “Barbie dolls.”

Technically, they’re both correct.

 

  1. **Genesis**



When Matt flips open the book that Father Martinez presses into his hand, and traces his fingers over, ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth’, he finds himself blinking back tears.

 

  1. **Contrast**



Matt doesn’t like engines as much as he likes books, but he is polite, so he pays attention; still, there’s no spark of interest in his eyes. Jessica, meanwhile, is angry when Brian says that she’s not quite big enough to change a tire yet, never mind that the tire is almost as tall as she is.

 

  1. **Horses for Courses**



When she takes Matt, Foggy and Jessica with her to Barnard one day, she’s not sure how to keep the boys entertained until she sees that Rhonda Simons, a judge on the federal circuit, is speaking in one of the lecture halls.

Matt and Foggy both come out of the lecture glowing, with a notebook full of a thousand questions, a bunch of adoring looks cast their way from the freshmen pre-law students, and a copy of Thurgood Marshall’s Liberty Medal acceptance speech.

 

  1. **Predictable**



When Jessica opens her lunch box and _doesn’t_ take out three juice pouches, Matt is surprised at how much the change throws him off.

 

  1. **Mistletoe**



Matt thinks it’s an incredibly stupid tradition, but he kisses Jessica on the cheek anyway.

“You’re blushing,” he teases her.

“Shut up,” she growls.

Naturally, he doesn’t.

 

**12\. Action**

They’re in the kitchen when Alyssa brings it up, after glancing over the counter to the living room. Matt is curled around Jessica, one foot tossed across her knee, his arm slung over her waist, his nose nestled into the back of her neck. His sunglasses lie on the arm of the couch, cheerfully abandoned, as he only did around Jessica. 

“They won’t be able to do that much longer,” Alyssa says softly. “Strange. I look at her sometimes, and I’m convinced she and I were in the hospital yesterday.”

Jack sighs, as he dries the crockpot. “Yeah, I know the feeling.” 

Alyssa’s eyes are amused as she glances at him, her smile as beautiful as ever. 

“When do you think they’ll figure it out?”

Jack raises his eyebrows. “It doesn’t bother you?” 

“She could do a lot worse,” Alyssa says bluntly. “Does it bother you?” 

“It did, a mite, when I first realised,” Jack says. “Considering that you and Brian are family to me. But then, nobody is blood related. And stoppin' it would be like trying to get the ocean to stop moving. You’ve seen the way he looks at her.”

Alyssa nods. “Like she’s the most astonishing person he’s ever met.” She pauses, grunting a little as she scrubs at the film of grease over a fork. “I give it eight years.” 

“Really? I’d say twelve.”

“From _now_?”

“Matty can be _really_  bad at feelings,” Jack says.

“Ten bucks says he’s better at them than you give him credit for.”

Jack smirks. “I’ll take that action.”


	2. 5 Times Jessica Took Care of Phil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Siblings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably stretching of the definition of 'took care of' at all points, but I really don't care.

**5 Times Jessica Took Care of Phil**

(And One Time He Took Care Of Her)

 

  1. **Held**



 

**Ages: 2.5 and 4 weeks old**

 

“Is his face supposed to be that pink?” Jessica asks dubiously, as Dad sets her on the low book-shelf in their room. From this side, she can see the baby gurgling in his bassinet.

“Shh,” Dad says. “Lower your voice. Yeah, his face is normal.”

Jessica wrinkles her nose. “His head’s kinda...weird.”

“Yours was the same way when you came into this world, sweetheart,” Dad says, looking at her with a smile he wears more and more. His eyes are crinkling at the corners. “You wanna hold him?”

She nods.

“You have to promise to be gentle.”

She promises.

Dad shows her how to support the baby’s head, and then sets him in her lap. Carefully, she slips her arm so that her hand is under his neck. Dad’s hands are below hers, strong and warm, the rough bits catching at her skin.

She looks at the baby, studying him closely. His eyes are a bright blue, which is confusing, because Grandma Schaeffer, who they’re living with, says that people get things from their family, like Jessica got Grandma’s nose. Jessica had asked how come Grandma still had her nose if she had got it.

Blue or not, though, there’s something in them as he looks up at her.

It’s _trust_.

She pulls him a little tighter into her arms, and a single thought goes through her head.

_Mine._

  


  1. **Shelter**



**Ages: 7 and 5**

On Phil’s first day of school, she finds him standing on the playground, looking at the different groups of people from his class. He’s biting his bottom lip hard, like he’s trying not to cry.

With a thick feeling in her throat, she remembers the fight she and Matt had last year. The chill realisation that she might not have friends anymore that had sunk into her stomach.

“C’mon,” she says, taking Phil’s hand, and leading him to where Matt and Foggy are settling down near the monkey bars. Their usual spot. “I’ll show you all the clapping games.”

  


  1. **Defence**



**Ages: 9 and 7**

 

When she finds Robbie F. smirking while Phil buries his head in his knees trying to hide the sounds of his crying, there are many things she does not do.

She does not do what her Dad would tell her to do, and find a teacher.

She does not do what Foggy and Matt and she would normally do, and plot “cunning revenge, Jess!” for later.

Instead, as a boiling hot feeling like lava floods her veins, she hurls the contents of her juice pouch into _fucking Robbie F's_   _eyes,_ and while he’s spluttering and gasping and wiping at them, punches him in the mouth.

 _“Shit_ _!”_ she hisses, even as she pulls Phil to his feet with her uninjured hand. “Fuck, _fuck,_ Matt never said it’d hurt that much!”

“You _said a swear!”_

“A little ‘thank you’ wouldn’t hurt!” Jess fires back, as they run to the safety of behind the cafeteria.

Robbie F. doesn’t go _anywhere near_ Phil and his friends ever again. Too embarrassed by the fact that the cut on his lip hadn’t gone away for twelve days after she’d punched him.

  


  1. **Game**



**Ages: 10 and 8**

When they sign him up for the soccer team, it means walking to school on a _Saturday_ at seven in the damn morning, and that’s just goddamn ridiculous.

So far, for telling her Dad so, she’s lost the five dollars of her allowance this week.

When they get there, Phil is standing there, as the team huddles up on the field. For a second after the coach sends them onto the field, she sees him glance at her.

She gives him a quick thumbs-up, and cheers when he steers the ball towards the next player on the field.

After they win the game, he comes running to her and tries picking her up.

It doesn’t end well, and there’s mud in her hair now, but she can’t help laughing anyway. God dammit.

...Oops. She said that out loud. There go the next three dollars.  
  


  1. **Chicken Soup**



**Ages: 13 and 11**

 

Phil’s been snuffling on the walk home for the past twenty minutes, his face is red, and he can’t pronounce his T’s.

“I’m goin’ do Dod’s house domorrow,” he says.

Jessica smirks at him as she unlocks the door.

“Dod, huh? Don’t think we’ve met,” she says.

Phil sticks his tongue out at her as he passes, his eyebrows furling together in a scowl. It’d look a lot scarier, if he wasn’t – well, a) if he wasn’t her eleven-year old brother, and b) if he didn’t have his tongue sticking out, and c) if he didn’t look like hell.  

“You know who I _med._ Dod.”

Jessica raises her eyebrows, as they dump their backpacks on the kitchen table. Phil shivers, as she takes off her coat.

She sighs, and heads into the kitchen. Good thing she’s had the microwave figured out for three years right now.

  
**\+ 1**

**Nightmare**

 

He wakes up to the sound of crying.

Jess’ voice, broken, and saying, in hitching gasps: _“Matty_ , Matty, no, no,” before the hiccups overtake her, and she gasps for breath again, and that's wrong, that – this doesn't  _happen_ , Jessica doesn't cry. He's never, ever seen her cry. She's the strongest person he knows. She's probably as strong as Captain America was.

He pads out of his room and into hers. The blue of the nightlight is playing over her face, the tears are running down her cheeks, and there’s a damp patch on the pillow. She’s burying her face in the pillow, her body shaking with the sobs.

_“M-Matty.”_

Phil swallows back tears for his big brother, and climbs into the bed, curling around her, slinging his arm over her chest.

“It’s okay,” he whispers into her hair. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

It’s a lie, the part about it being okay. But her hand slips over his and squeezes it fiercely anyway.


End file.
